Fractured
by Kesshou Uryou
Summary: Once upon a time there was a drawing in a Secret Place where dreams could come true. Not anymore.


Disclaimer: I do not own.

**Fractured  
**_kesshou uryou_

_--&--_

Once upon a time there was a drawing in a Secret Place where dreams could come true.

But before there was a drawing, there was just that Secret Place and children tentatively peeking their curious little heads in and running their hands across curving moist walls and shooting brief smiles with a flicker of uncertainty.

It was supposed to be scary, and maybe it was a little at first. But after a few times of exploring, and then more and then some more of the little excursions, it lost its childish eerie feel and it just became another place.

Somewhere along the line, small restless hands etched their message, no one in the world knowing exactly what it meant, even the primitive artists themselves. Only they knew they could do it, did do it, and that was enough for them. They were on the top of the world. They weren't afraid of anything.

Growing up changed a lot of things. Perspective was just one of them.

But maybe it was frightening in another sense still even after so much terror had passed. There had been some obtrusive mark of confusion tracing back to that singular moment, ill-concealed as it was. Perhaps arguably the beginning of everything that went wrong and right and just what made who they were now derived from that one place. Everything had fallen downhill from then on. It had risen up, and then gravity decided to take its affect once again.

It was a Secret Place of naïve wonder. A secret in another way as it was hiding the fact of what it would be. The catalyst of pain and searches and fights and horror and losses all originated there, and there it never took responsibility to end the things it had begun. Here was where a hunt for something all ready there was commenced.

Days passed with blood and tears and fights and wins and failures and somehow an inhabitant found its way back to where she knew she was supposed to be. Because it was understood. This was where it had begun; she'd wait.

And there was this patient red head who waited and waited and waited days and months and then a year. And she was only human so it couldn't be helped when she couldn't wait anymore. And then she left and that Secret Place was lonely again for the first time since the little trio's prior departure. But it still had the unspoken promise of a return.

There were after all, markings from chubby, unskilled hands upon its wall. And that was a contract to the death. There was bondage, a link, and there was no escaping.

But that drawing on that wall, it began to fade, and continue to fade it did. And now he's come back with two familiar faces to gaze at it once more, but it looks different and all the same because he can hardly remember what it looked like in the first place.

There's something so… indescribable here. Not in an awed, surprising experience, but rather just in the pleasant realization of, "I never knew it could exist until now" kind of way.

But memories are just that and that drawing had surely faded.

But still he refuses to believe it. There was a contract here, written yet unwritten, and always waiting for the Secret Place to fulfill its end of the deal. But then he's off again. And so is she. And so is the other one. And so is everyone else in the goddamn world, and that Secret Place is lonely again. Because maybe it just was always meant to be.

A place full of secrets that should be left alone because secrets can only be kept among the dead if word ever so much as passes to another's lips. That Secret Place is protecting itself and its scribbles from the world because it's a _secret_.

But now it's been too long. And is he ever coming back? Because a drawing can't last forever and neither can time. Or a life or a purpose or dignity or grief.

And that slab of cool, cool stone is hardly there, holding up a Secret Place. But it's all too certain.

That drawing he carved once, long, long ago has been soaked with blood. Caked and dirtied and driven down every last crevice and crack. Blood, fulfilling and fitting and not so lonely yet still so very much so, is filling up a Secret Place's emptiness.

Once upon a time there was a drawing in a Secret Place where dreams could come true. Not anymore.

And there's no getting it back to the way it once was.

_--& end-- _

**Fractured, as in "fractured fairytale."****Random inspiration. **

**Review? They are love.**


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